Google Calendar: How to Create and Reserve Appointment Slots

This is a great feature that I bet many do not know was there.

Using Online Quizzes and Grading

I recently re-tweeted an article by +Alice Keeler, but thought it worth highlighting here.  Alice discusses some great models she uses to eliminate the time-consuming worksheets (paper or digital) and uses online applications to administer quizzes.  The focus here is student-centered!

I have received several tweets about how cumbersome it is to have students work with PDF’s in a digital format. I am going to be blunt, uploading your worksheets to PDF’s and putting them online is not a 21st century lesson. This is substitution on the SAMR model. It is a pain to manage digital worksheets. May I take this opportunity to suggest that is because you should not be doing this.

Using technology should create a BETTER learning environment. If you are doing the same tasks with technology you should expect the same educational outcome. Rethink when using tech how you can change what you do. How the task can be more student centered. Allow for more creativity. How do digital tools allow you to differentiate and personalize the instruction? How do digital tools allow your students to become independent learners?

If The Computer Can Grade It, It Should

One of the advantages to digital work is the ability for students to receive feedback faster. Instead of uploading worksheets to your website, Google Classroom or your LMS for students to fill out consider instead recreating the worksheets in Google Forms, That Quiz, Quia, or any of the many other online tools for administering quizzes. Do a Google Search for “online quiz” and several options come up.

If the questions are DOK 1 or DOK 2 a computer can probably grade it. It is significantly more motivating to students to immediately receive feedback on their progress. Rather than do an entire worksheet of problems, wait for the teacher to grade it and give them their scores back, online quiz tools can provide students with feedback immediately after every question or at the completion of the questions. This is win win. The students are more motivated and receive their scores immediately. Teachers save time grading. The quiz generators often have data that the teacher can then look at to see what percentage of the class are being successful, how long it is taking them to do the work, and more quickly target students that need help.

I typed up all of my worksheets, quizzes and tests into quia.com. This allowed me to spend my time helping students rather than grading. The analytics and reports helped me to better target students and make adjustments to my instruction. It also helped me to differentiate. It is unlikely that a worksheet is appropriate for every single student in the class. Some students need more practice, some students need less. Using Quia I could type the questions into a question bank to assign the students a random 3-5 problems. The catch was that they had to get 100%. Instead of doing 30 problems and finding out they were not doing it correctly students would do ONE problem and discover they were not doing it correctly. They would make adjustments and try again. If they were unsuccessful again they would stop and ask for help. This reduced or eliminated a lot of frustration for my students. Having students link to online quizzes allows me to provide the students choices. Advanced students can practice more challenging work. Students who are struggling can practice work that is more at their level. Because the computer is grading the questions it is not a grading burden on the teacher to have different students doing different work.

Short Answer

Using Google Docs, Google Forms or something like Quia is a better solution than having students annotate a PDF for short answer questions. Using Google Forms I can see EVERY students short answer in a spreadsheet. This is grading bliss. I am not opening and closing 30-200 digital files. I open one spreadsheet and I see every students answer all at once. I can create a column for feedback and quickly and easily respond to each students answers in the feedback column. Use a mail merge to email students their feedback or use Autocrat to merge the students answers and your feedback into a Google Doc and share it with the student in Google Drive.

You can see Alice's original article here.

Quizlet for iPad

If you haven't discovered it already, Quizlet is a great app as a tool for studying.  Quizlet had been out for awhile, however from my experience it offers a decent amount of capability for being a FREE app.

Not only is this a great tool for general study of facts and concepts, but it, also, works well for learning languages.

Starting off, a student can easily Sign-up and Sign-in via their school Gmail account.  Making it very easy and secure for a student to register for an account.  Once started, a student can create a data bank of terms and definitions grouped in what Quizlet calls study sets.  Below is a video demo of using Quizlet.

The New Empower 2.0

If you haven't seen it already, Empower's (formerly Educate) site has had an overhaul on its layout and design.  Very new; and very different.  However, much more user friendly and much simpler to navigate through.  It's designed to allow the user to have most everything they need without having to look to hard for it.  I think the one feature that many will appreciate is you have immediate view and access to your classes and class data right on the homepage when you login to your account.

Before, the homepage was the messaging service (which, you can still access in the top right-hand menu) and you had to look around for you class data.

I have embedded below a string of tweets I posted yesterday during workshop loaded full of helpful tips and demos of the new Empower site design.  Be sure to peruse through these posts to help you learn how to navigate and use Empower.

You can access our SAD1 Empower Site by going to:

sad1.educatek12.com

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Happy Safer Internet Day

Accessing Other Calendars on Your Mobile Device

In our digital-age, calendars have a completely different view than they used to when we pinned our favorite yearly calendars to our wall, or placed it on our desks.  Today, having multiple calendars on one account is standard.  The advantage to having multiple calendars is having the ability to accommodate many different events, shifts, programs or even lifestyles; have the ability to isolate the view of these events; and the ability to share these with others.

There are times when you need access to a calendar that someone else created on our mobile device - smartphone or tablet.  For example, our Middle School has their own events calendar, and faculty have the ability to add the Middle School calendar to their own Google Calendar for viewing.  I have had some faculty approach me wanting to be able to access this same Middle School calendar on their iPad.

Unfortunately, there is no simple, one-step for this procedure (that I know of).  However, it is still easy to do.  Through this method you will be able to access other calendars on your mobile device's calendar.

To begin, you will have already needed to add a calendar created by someone else to your own Google Calendar by a link shared to you by the creator of that calendar.  Then, you will have to add your Google account to your mobile device's settings (i.e. on an iPad: Settings; Mail, Contacts and Calendars).

Then go to Google's Calendar Sync Settings on any web browser.  Here you can select (or deselect) the calendars you wish to have available on your mobile device. When you view your mobile's calendar, the newly added calendars from others, should be accessible.

Meeting Strangers Online

In my Digital Citizenship classes I have been holding in our 7th and 8th grade classes, I talk about the dynamic of meeting strangers on the street and meeting strangers online.  When we grow up, we are taught not to talk to strangers.  Parents know that there are malicious people out there and they want to protect their children.  My daughter is very much a social butterfly, and we have to instill in her not to talk to strangers.

In my classes, we discuss how the rules change when meeting strangers online.  The average part of an online lifestyle is meeting strangers.  It is one of the best parts of being online.  Sharing, collaborating, strategizing, meeting, communicating, learning - many careers require the ability to do this with strangers online; and students can learn a lot from strangers online.

The main element I try to capture with the students is that meeting strangers online can be a great opportunity, however we have to learn when the relationship (and I do not mean romantic relationship, but any kind of communication or transaction with a stranger is referred to as a relationship in the class) gets uncomfortable, or private information is being asked for, then red flags should go up and we should reconsider the value of the relationship.  I teach students how to deal with situations like this - logging off, leaving the conversation, changing the subject, not revealing your real name, and especially not giving out personal information.